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WE CAUGHT UP WITH CHAD FLEISCHER AFTER THE BEAVER CREEK EVENT AND JUST PRIOR TO THE WORLD CUP RACE IN LAKE LOUISE. THERE, HIS 6TH PLACE FINISH BROUGHT BACK HIS HUNT FOR THE PODIUM. TWO WEEKS LATER, A FREAK ACCIDENT IN VAL D’ISERE, FRANCE, FORCED THE SNOW LEOPARD BACK TO MAUI. A DISLOCATED SHOULDER WILL NOW SIDELINE HIM FOR THE REMAINDER OF THIS YEAR.


AMERICAN WINDSURFER: Tell us what it’s like to be the number one downhill skier in the US. What does it mean to you?

CHAD FLEISCHER: It’s pretty exciting right now because skiing in the United States really needs a personality; it needs spirit; it needs a following. For me to be able to provide not only the personality but to go out there and compete with the Europeans who have dominated the sport since its inception, I can’t think of a more exciting combination. It’s not just about being the best in the United States. It’s about performing at a world class level where you’re competing for world cup medals.

AW: Are the Europeans that much better than the US? Why do they dominate?

CF: If you go to Europe and see that all of Austria is like living between here [Vail] and Denver, that’s how big the country is. It’s all mountains. Skiing is a tradition. It’s a way of life, whereas here skiing is more of a high class sport. It’s almost like windsurfing. I think skiing and windsurfing in a lot of ways are exactly the same. You have to travel to do it. It takes time. It’s not something you can just hop out of your backyard and strap on your windsurf board or strap on your ski boots. In Europe, skiing and windsurfing are a way of life. It’s a traditional way of life and they take pride in it. To be a skier or a windsurfer, is like being a football, basketball or a baseball player in the States.

AW: Do they train much harder than the US team? Are they better athletes?

CF: I don’t think so. I believe 100% that the skiers in the United States are better athletes. You take the guys that are on the US Ski Team right now and you put them on the soccer field, a football field or a baseball diamond, they could be world class athletes in any sport they choose. Whereas most of the Europeans skiiers aren’t so versatile. It’s weird. You watch them try to play volleyball or try to throw a football or kick a soccer ball and it’s just funny. All they know is ski racing. It’s what they were born to do. So from an athletics point they are not better. But the way they have been coached since they were three years old gives them such solid basics, such solid techniques, such solid fundamentals. And on top of that, all the ski companies in the world are over there, so they have cutting edge products. I know there are guys on our team right now that ski on products that the Europeans would laugh at. I’ve been laughed at before. It wasn’t until six months ago this year that I finally had black absorption plates on my skis. I have been skiing on red plates. So I went and asked the Austrians “What do you think of the red plates?” The rep laughed at me. Here I’ve been skiing on plates that they know suck. In the US that happens a lot, not only with skis, but with boots and bindings. We’re just like the bottom of the totem pole for that kind of stuff.

AW: How can that be changed?

CF: I think it’s been so long since Americans have had a chance to dominate. So long since anyone’s been worth the effort for a European company to go out and insure that this guy has the most cutting-edge product on his feet. That’s something that I can change. That’s something that I want to change. It’s important for me to change this and the best way to do that is not speaking out loud. It’s not saying “hey, you know this,” or “hey that,” in the papers. It’s going out and winning and winning consistently. When you win ski races, that speaks for itself. When you start winning consistently, then people start listening.

AW: Last year, in the last World Cup Race, you came in second. How did you put that together? What happened?

CF: Well, it was kind of funny, because the momentum really started building at the world championships here in Vail. I finished 6th and was .27 away from a gold medal. I knew from that day forward that I was right in there with the best. We went back over to Europe and a bunch of races got cancelled. We had tough conditions in our last regular season races in Norway and I won the training run. But then conditions really got rough and mentally I tried to repeat what I did to win the training run and instead of just going out and skiing. I pushed too hard.

So when we were on the plane to the World Cup finals, I was telling my teammate Daron Rahlves, “I finally got it figured out, man. I know how it works. We’re going to win this race.” So going into the World Cup finals, I knew where I needed to be mentally. I knew how I felt physically, on my skis. And even though I didn’t win that race, I lost by .16, but at the same time, it was an entirely new level for me, because I sat in the starting gate knowing that no matter what I did, I was going to win the race. When you kick out of the gate with that feeling, with that confidence, you win. That’s why Hermann Meier is able to do what Hermann Meier is doing now. He’s taken it to a whole new level. The guy is laughing at all of us right now. He’s saying “I’m going to see if I can win this race by a second.” He’s not just trying to win. He’s trying to dominate. That’s how it works. Confidence in ski racing, it is crazy like that. Once you get the feeling, you can do anything. You can will yourself to win.

AW: How can you keep that feeling?

CF: I think it’s more or less just believing 100% in yourself. Knowing that you have the ability to put it all together. Sometimes it happens and sometimes it doesn’t. It’s almost like the man upstairs is really in control as to when you’re going to get your day. But once you get your day, it seems like you can tune into all those feelings and make that happen time after time after time. You just do everything right. Even if it’s wrong, it’s right, because your confidence is sound.

AW: So it all comes down to the mental thing?

CF: Yeah, there’s no question about it. You take the 10 or 15 best guys and watch them ski down the mountain, they all make beautiful turns. They are all equal skiers. It’s not like one’s better than the other, but when you put them on a race course on race day, and they have to nail the line and they have to have the ability to trust in the line to go fast, that’s where the changes take place. But the changes take place mentally, in what they believe they can and can’t get away with on race day on a given line that they chose to ski. That’s for sure. It’s a mental game. It’s so competitive. It’s at such a high level that you have to be there, every single time that you go down the ski slopes. You really have to be there.

AW: You retired for awhile. Why?

CF: Well, I just had the worst season of my life, and I just kind of burned out. My mom passed away and I was trying to ski fast. It seemed liked every time I tried to ski fast, I was never skiing for me, really. Once my mom passed away, I was trying to win ski races for her. Even if I had a good race and didn’t win. If I was like 8th or 10th or whatever, it wasn’t good enough. It was never good enough. I think it just created a serious downward spiral for me. Unless it was #1, it was never good enough. Instead of patting myself on the back and saying “I can build on this,” it was just like “You suck. You suck.” And then after having a couple of seasons like that, it went from not that bad of a season to my last season. I just decided. I wasn’t having fun. I didn’t really care, and I walked away from the sport, and I went to Hawaii.

I windsurfed tons and tons. I hung out and just partied. Then 3 weeks into that, I started going to the gym. I came home from a workout and was shaving and it was weird. It was like a brick fell out of the sky and hit me on the head. That’s the only way to explain it. It was like a vision or something. It was like I suddenly felt all those emotions that I got into the sport to begin with. Why I love ski racing so much, and how important it was for me to become the best in the world and to dominate the sport. I wanted to leave the sport on my terms. So I immediately picked up the phone and called Kail Christiansen, my personal coach, my trainer, and asked him if he’d help me out on my quest. I was prepared to sacrifice anything and everything to get what I wanted out of this world ski racing. That was kind of my rebirth. I think it was because I hit such a low in my career and I was finally ready to call it quits. Walking away from the sport, even if it was for just like a few weeks, allowed for me to understand why I do what I do and why I love what I do so much.

AW: This latest event in Beaver Creek, you’re obviously disappointed with your results. At the same time, I was quite impressed with how you handled yourself in defeat. Can you talk to me about that?

CF: Well, that’s the thing. I have been in this sport long enough to know that when I lose, I am the one out there that loses. I still need to hold my head high and be a champion. A true champion may lose, but he’s never a loser. He still holds his head high and knows that the next week is going to be his week. That’s just how I have to approach this. It doesn’t do me any good to have a bad day and cross the finish line when 10,000 people are there to watch me, to cheer me on. They’re psyched, because I’m doing something that they can’t do. I’m one of the best skiers in the world and they recognize that and they love that and they come to watch me, regardless of how I perform. It would be disappointing to the fans, if I pissed and moaned about a bad result, because they love me anyway in the end. I have to be there to give them what they want to see. That’s a great attitude and my love for the sport. It’s not like I’m acting happy. I love what I’m doing. I know how much they care about watching me do what I love to do. That in itself is wonderful. I can’t really say that I could be disappointed because I have so much support from everyone. And that’s an awesome feeling. It’s not often that you run into that many people that support you, whether of win or lose.

AW: Did you feel a pressure not to disappoint your fans?

CF: You know, I was really nervous the day of the downhill, but that left me about half an hour before I went. I was totally fine with it. I didn’t feel any pressure at all. Any pressure that I ever feel is from me—to perform. It’s never from the papers or the crowds or anything else. Yeah, people want me to win, but I want to win 100 times or 1,000 times more than they want me to win. Then I am 1,000 times more stoked than they are for me. When I lose, I’m 1,000 times more disappointed. You kind of get all sides of it, being the athlete. But that’s why I am the athlete and that’s why it’s a sport. That’s why it’s such an awesome experience and that’s why it’s so wonderful.

AW: Seems that the events where you did so well you didn’t have the home crowd pressure.

CF: No. But at the same time there was tons of pressure on me from me. Because like I said, I was on the airplane telling my teammate, “Hey I’m going to get out there and win this thing.” So I expected the same thing from myself in Spain that I expected from myself here in Vail. That’s where I am with my skiing now. That’s my expectation of myself every time I blast out of the starting gate—go out there and try to win the race. I’m not in races any more to kick out of the starting gate and see how I can do. Or to take an 8th and be like “Yeah. Sweet. We can build on that.” Yeah, I can always build on an 8th place, but now if I’m not winning, it’s not good enough. That’s the attitude I’m going to have until I retire.

AW: Can you talk a little bit about your past and how you came to skiing. Did your father lead you
into it? How did it all come about?

CF: Well, we moved from Nebraska, and I tried hockey for a year. My dad went out and bought hockey duds. I was the new kid in town and it was just weird. No one would pass me the puck. I scored this winning goal and tied the game with 3 seconds left and no one said a word—the coach or any of the kids. They were just like “whatever...” It was just one of those experiences where I didn’t make the traveling team because I was the new kid in town and all the parents had all the say and all the pull. So I decided not doing the team thing, you know? I can only count on me. That’s why when I fell in love with skiing, before I started racing, I would go out and hang out with all the hot doggers, the guys that smoked weed. I’m the little kid going up chairlifts in 5th grade and these guys who were smoking weed on the chair lifts and drinking beers and then they would hit the mogul fields and jump these huge cliffs all wasted, and that’s how I learned all my tricks. I was this little kid hanging out with these crazy skiers. I loved that, man! It was just like I lived for hanging out with the hot doggers. And it paid off, because when I decided to get into ski racing . . . I got into ski racing because my best friend at the time convinced me to join Ski Club Vail so we could ski together. So I did that. He and I would go out and we would just grease ski. We would go track down the hot doggers and cruise around the mountain. We’d always get busted for missing training at Ski Club Vail. I’d say for my first two years, well at least my first year, in Ski Club Vail I trained maybe like 15% of the time. The rest of the time I was just out there free skiing with the hot doggers. I don’t even remember training for the races. I just remember someone saying, “OK, you have a race.” And I was like, “Oh! OK, whatever.” So I showed up, after my dad registered me and all that for the races. I got a bib and I was just getting ready to get into the starting gate and I looked across the valley and there was a big herd of elk cruising and I told my coach, “Hey check it out. Look at all those elk over there.” And he kind of grabbed me by the coat. He said, “You’re here to ski a race. What are you doing? I want your mind on what’s going on. You’re about to go down a Giant Slalom course. That’s what you need to be thinking about.” And it just blew me away. I was like, “Wow. These guys take this seriously, I guess.” [chuckle] So I went in the starting gate and blew out of there and I was third in the first race I was ever in. It was a Vail Cup. In the next race I was second. Then in the next race, that year I won! I don’t remember ever losing after that. I think it was that hot dogger attitude, where I don’t really care and speed is natural if you’re comfortable on your skis. I think that’s where I got my good skiing. I was doing 360s when I was in fifth grade. I mean now every kid and his grandmother are doing 360s, but back in the day when I was under chair four doing big 360s as a fifth grader that was pretty insane. I think that’s really where it all came from—the love for the sport of skiing, not ski racing—just skiing in general.

AW: Do you find that you’re more focused on your skiing now? Do you still look for elks?

CF: No, it’s definitely more than elks, for sure. [chuckles]
This good family friend of mine, Sheika Gramshammer, her mom and dad pretty much started Vail. She still has a nickname for me. She calls me Squiggle Hips. It’s because before I raced, my dad used to take us up and teach us how to ski, and he skied like the old school hot doggers’ style, like Wayne Wong—where you have your boots together. He used to tell us to make swan-like pole plants, your hand does a swan-like-neck [chuckles].

So when I went to Ski Club there, I skied like an absolute freak, man. I had zero racer technique. I was like a hot dogger. They make you ski down in groups. I’ll never forget, they made us stagger, like “OK, next.” So I’d go skiing down. Some of the coaches who used to coach me are now head of ski companies, like Charlie Adams who’s head of Dynastar, Lang USA. We’d go golfing together and he just can’t stop laughing because he says he’ll never forget the day he saw me ski down. He said, “Who the hell is that and what the hell is he doing?”

AW: [laughs]

CF: Just like old school style. Then my dad came in after my first day of try-outs at Ski Club Vail and—this is funny, because my dad never pressured me to be a good skier or to be a skier —but I guess my dad was telling Charlie Adams that he wanted me to be a world class skier. My dad really felt that I had what it would take to be a world class skier. Charlie Adams always talks about how he and the other coaches just laughed my dad out of the office, because they saw me skiing that day and it was like—”Wow, this kid is off the deep end already, and he’s only in fifth grade.” It’s funny to hear those kinds of stories because I started really late in the sport, considering that everybody else that ski races started when they were 3. I started when I was like 11 or 12. It’s just funny to hear those stories.

AW: You now train incredibly hard. Give me a sense of what your training day is like.

CF: An average training day for me is that I leave the house at 7:30 am. I have martial arts from 8 to 10 and I come home about 10:30. Then my next workout is about 12:30.

AW: When you say martial arts, what does it mean?

CF: With martial arts—I do everything. I do punching, kicking Kotas, stances. I do not only practice martial arts but also endurance work outs, like general body fitness, like tons of push ups, pull ups, hand-stand push ups. All kinds of gymnastics moves as well. Hand stands. It’s more spatial awareness and general body dynamics, if it’s not martial arts, it’s spatial awareness and body weight exercises. Then my next workout is a strength work out in the gym, and that’s about one and a half hours or two hours long. That involves lower body, upper body, head to toe. I take a break and then start with an aerobic workout which is running, biking, hiking. On another given day that same workout is an anaerobic workout and the anaerobic workout can be the same thing but just more of an interval style sprint. Instead of just hiking for two or three continuous hours, I’ll do a speed hike where I’ll jog up a mountain and during the jog I’ll sprint to a point on the trail and then I’ll walk and recover to a desirable heart rate and then I’ll sprint again. Usually it’s about a minute to a minute and a half on, then two minutes or three minutes off. Then on top of that, I also do private swimming lessons three days a week. That’s new this year. That’s a way for me to focus on technique, because I’m not a strong swimmer—I’m a good swimmer, but I’m not a very strong swimmer, so it’s good to focus on technique. I also have to focus on my breathing, because swimming is all about rhythm and being able to breathe into that rhythm. I enjoy that. I think that’s good. I also have a friend who’s an engineer, and I work closely with him developing all kinds of new products. I do velocity field drills, which are all sorts of pyrometrics and sprints.

AW: Pyrometrics?

CF: Jumping exercises. I wear a weight vest that I designed that weighs 53 pounds when I do that, so it’s a way for me to get not only a real good field workout but it also helps build strength with anything that I do. Then I do tuck routines. When you’re ski racing you get into a tuck, that’s a big aerodynamic position. I do tuck routines with poles that have twelve pound weights on the ends of them, so I have to hold my arms way out in front of me and I wear my weight vest. I do anywhere from two minutes to six minutes in duration. I’ll do eight sets of those. If you’ve ever gotten down in a tuck position in your living room and tried to hold it for more than 30 seconds, you’d probably die. My minimum is two minutes and my longest is six minutes. I do that with a 53-pound weight vest. This way I can be assured that my legs are never going to be tired when I’m on a downhill course, because fatigue is taken completely out of the picture. It’s not a factor. It allows you to focus on just skiing fast.

Then I also have a rack that I have on top of my truck. I do tuck training on the top of my truck. This way I don’t have to travel to Buffalo, New York, and get in the wind tunnel there, because first, it costs a lot of money to do that and second, it takes two or three days. They have to reconstruct the wind tunnel to get the type of wind speed that I need, that’s in the 80 or 90 mile an hour range. If I work on my truck, I can go up to 97 miles an hour. I also have another platform that I use; I just had it designed. It’s a vibrating, springloaded platform that my engineer friend designed and we have a patent on that. It’s a never-ending process really, between doing my regular workouts and then finding new work outs. On top of discovering new workouts, it’s patenting and designing new workout equipment. So it’s a lot of fun. It’s not really work, because everything that I design and everything that we patent is what I really feel is what I need to be successful at ski racing.

AW: Let’s talk about windsurfing.

CF: Well, you know, I think that windsurfing really paralleled skiing. For my family, skiing was always a family sport for us. Always. My brother raced. My sister raced. My parents both loved to ski. So when we got into windsurfing, we got into windsurfing through a Swedish guy that was a big time skier. Then we used to travel with everybody who windsurfed here in the mountains. They were all skiers, so people that were skiers were windsurfers in the summertime. We used to go to regattas when we had the old school Whalers, the one designs. We had them decked out with a trailer and all, because when my dad gets into something, he gets into it big time. So we had a trailer with four or five Whalers. We had one for each person in the family and a couple extras for my dad to rent out.

AW: [chuckles]

CF: So that’s how it all started. Camping, sailing the lakes here in Colorado, freezing our asses off, because the weather was like about 55 degrees. It was cool. I think that’s when windsurfing was really the funest for me. I love the sport now, but that was way back when the freestyle was going. The guys were riding on the rails of the one designs and be riding them upside down and sailing them backwards on the sails. We weren’t even using the harnesses back then. That was back before the harness days, even, at least in Colorado. I am sure they were probably using them in Hawaii or wherever. We had one design races, cruising around on Whalers in Colorado lakes. I learned how to long board jibe with my dad and my mom—the four of us out there at one time taking lessons. Sailing with my sister on the tip of my windsurf board. Just stuff like that was really like the soul of the sport. I think my family and I still have such a love affair for the sport because it brings back a lot of those memories. Every time that I get on a windsurf board, really I go back to my roots. It’s like when you see somebody in your family, you remember everybody in your family. That’s how windsurfing is when I strap on a windsurf board, I remember all the good times I had sailing. Windsurfing to me is a parallel to skiing, in that it’s an individual sport and once you strap on your skis and once you throw your feet into the windsurf board and click in your harness, it’s like total and absolute freedom. It’s the most beautiful thing about an individual sport like that. It’s gravity in skiing and it’s wind in windsurfing. There’s no engine. There are no fumes. It’s just you and mother nature and you can do whatever you want to do. You can throw flips. You can just go fast. Or you can surf down waves. It’s just endless. Absolutely endless. That’s a beautiful thing. There are no limits.

AW: I’m intrigued that you said your best memories are those old days where you just did tricks on long boards, whereas when you are skiing you are basically on the pinnacle of high performance. You don’t find that in windsurfing.

CF: Yeah, it’s funny. I guess it depends. For me, I don’t really ever get the opportunity to go skiing with my friends and family. I don’t even remember the last time I went down the ski slope with my dad. I don’t remember the last time he and I went skiing. I don’t even remember the last time my sister and I went skiing. I remember the last time I skied with my brother was three years ago, and I skied him so hard that he couldn’t even walk down the stairs at the end of the day. He had to hold onto the railing, that’s how tired his legs were. [chuckles] I almost killed him. He flew into trees, because he got back onto the skis and couldn’t turn anymore because he was so weak. He was like just on the tail of his skis and went straight into the woods. In windsurfing, I guess I’m really intense. When I do something, I get into it big time. Sailing—I could go out and sail by myself for hours and hours. I enjoy the fact that, when I really enjoy windsurfing is when I go out with a friend, like with my brother when we were in Hawaii. When I’m with my dad, my sister and boyfriend, we’re all sailing side by side. Just talking trash to each other. Spraying each other. Sailing one in front of the other and watching each other catch air. That’s almost like skiing together. When you do that, it makes it so much more fun. And I’m in a sport where it’s so intense, and so focused with my skiing that it’s hard for me really to have fun skiing with somebody, unless they’re going down the hill at 50 or 60 miles an hour with me, non-stop, top to bottom. With windsurfing, I don’t have to have that intensity. I can go out and have fun, whether it’s on a one design board or whether it’s wave sailing. It’s nice to have it intense when I want it to be intense, but also to be fun. Windsurfing allows for that.

AW: So, what’s next for you?

CF: Well, for skiing, it was nice to start the season here at home like this, with the expectations and on this hill. I mean, this is probably the most technically demanding hill that there is. So it will only get easier. It’s almost like, I climbed the face of the mountain and now I’m walking down the back side of it, really, for the rest of the season. That’s how I feel about the year now. The rest of the races are equally as important or more important but now from the mind set, at least, it seems that they are all going to be easier and there’s a lot less pressure. So that’s good. So I’m really looking forward to skiing fast, even Lake Louise coming up here next week. It’s always been a good hill for me, and we’re still in North America, so that should be good.

Then, from the life standpoint: For me, I’m getting married in May, in Maui. I’m looking forward to that, for sure. That should be a good time for all friends and family. I’m looking forward to that. That’ll be an awesome thing. The main thing is that I stay focused on skiing. At least through 2002, for sure. Then I’ll evaluate, once the Olympics are over. I’ll evaluate where I am with the sport and how much fun I’m having. It’s really about how much fun I’m having and whether or not it’s worth it for me to continue ski racing, from that standpoint. Beyond that—who knows? It’ll take care of itself. What I really want out of life is to ski every winter and sail all summer long. [both laugh] As long as I can do that, I’ll be happy. I don’t want to be rich. I just want to be happy. As long as you’re focused on being happy, it allows you to acquire wealth at the same time.

Windsurfing and skiing, that’s life in itself. Nothing else really matters. Kids? Family? Having Renee as my wife and having kids and being able to windsurf in the summertime and ski all winter.
That’s as perfect as it will ever get.